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President Biden Vows To Protect What He Says Is A Woman's Fundamental Right To Choose; Several Large Explosions Heard Around Lviv; President Biden To Tour A Lockheed Martin Factory Producing Thousands Of Anti-Tank Missile Systems. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired May 03, 2022 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Victor Blackwell. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. Alisyn is off today. President Biden is vowing to protect what he says is a woman's fundamental right to choose. He's now calling on Congress to take action to take that right after the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If this decision holds, it's really quite a radical decision. It basically says all the decisions related to your private life, who you marry, whether or not you decide to conceive a child or not, whether or not you're can have an abortion, a range of other decisions. (Inaudible) how you raise your child, what does this do in -- does this mean that in Florida they can decide they're going to pass a law? Saying that same sex marriage is not permissible? It's against the law in Florida? And so there's a whole -- it's a fundamental shift in America (inaudible).

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BLACKWELL: Politico obtained and published a leaked draft opinion written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Now the opinion would eliminate the constitutionally protected right to abortion. Alito writes this in part. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is implicitly protected by any Constitutional provision. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the leak draft is authentic but he cautioned that it is not final.

Roberts (inaudible) the leak as a betrayal and a singular and egregious breech of that trust that is in a front to the court and he wants to know who is responsible and has launched an investigation. Security at the Supreme Court is ramped up right now. Protestors you see are gathered outside. There's a live look right outside the Supreme Court. Let's start with Supreme Court biographer and legal analyst Joan Biskupic. Joan, Roberts said today that this not a final decision but is this a done deal. I mean, the potential that this leak could sway any of these justices. JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good afternoon, Victor. First of

all, it's not a done deal and in fact there have probably been developments that we do not know of since February 10th. February 10th is the day on the document that Politico has and my experience with the court is that several things could have happened behind the scenes between then and now and early May.

You know, at minimum there'd be tweaks to the language, that other justices on the majority would have wanted changes in various paragraphs, different phrasing, everything, you know, from small little tweaks in the footnotes to substantial removal of certain, maybe heated -- heated paragraphs or maybe the addition of other rational.

So, we know that -- we know that things happen in that time and we also know that, you know, votes can shift. That suddenly a 5-4 decision that would give one party the win suddenly changes -- changes things and the other party's prevails. But I have to say, given what I know independent of this draft, there seems to be five conservative justices ready to adopt this kind of reasoning.

Maybe not as harshly stated as Justice Alito has stated in this opinion, but at least to reverse Roe. Now, again, we have a few more weeks left of the term. Things could happen and when you ask could this leak mean that it's -- it stays settled? I think what it does is it disrupts whatever kind of ongoing deliberations could have happened and now it puts them all in a microscope and now we know Victor exactly what Samuel Alito thought when he started out, and what maybe most or at least many of his colleagues were ready to sign on to.

BLACKWELL: Yes. It will be interesting to see what makes that final published opinion and what doesn't carry over from this draft from February. Speaking of ongoing deliberations, you've got reporting that Chief Justice Roberts dissented and was trying to slice away some abortion rights rather than overturning Roe v. Wade outright. What do you know?

BISKUPIC: That's right. This is what I know and again, you know, I always want to add the caveat that there's so much we don't know because it's such a secret driven institution. But I know that the chief who once upon a time was a pretty strong opponent of abortion rights, did not want to go all the way in this particular case to reverse Roe versus Wade. He was willing to uphold the Mississippi law that's before the justices right now, which would ban abortion --

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BISKUPIC: -- after 15 weeks of pregnancy but he, as far as I know, he was not ready to sign onto this kind of opinion and he was hoping to maybe pick off a justice or two. The ones that might be -- might have been open to that, would have been the newest justices Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett because they have shown some tentativeness in other areas of the law.

But what I was hearing before this big political bombshell is that the chief was not making headway, now he might have been but we don't have any kind of documentation that would show that he has made headway but, you know, usually my mantra is it ain't over 'til it's over. Bt with a leak of this magnitude, it certainly feels like this is the direction they're going and this is the direction they're taking this -- the -- the country.

BLACKWELL: All right. Joan Biskupic with some crucial reporting there for us. Thank you, Joan.

BISKUPIC: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: So this is an emotional time on Capitol Hill, certainly since this draft opinion was exposed.

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SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The court should tune out the bad face noise and feel completely free to do their jobs. They should follow the facts and the law, wherever that leads.

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SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): It is about the integrity of justices who said in open public hearings that they would respect the rule of law, and respecting the rule of law means this precedent that has been there for nearly 50 years. Look, I feel really angry about this and what I feel angry about is that in an extremist Supreme Court is going to impose their views on the rest of America.

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BLACKWELL: CNN Congressional Correspondent Lauren Fox is with us now from Capitol Hill. So Lauren, what -- what more are you learning from lawmakers today as they react to this leak?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a lot more shock and frustration Victor where Elizabeth Warren is coming from and it is coming from not just Democrats, but also some Republicans. There are, of course, concerns about the fact that this very deliberative process at the Supreme Court leaked out no matter how iterative it was in back in February.

There's also concerns from many Democrats that the entire integrity of the confirmation process is really on the line now, because if you remember in those confirmation hearings you had people like Brett Kavanaugh saying that he believed that Roe versus Wade was settled law. And you have some Republicans, Senator Susan Collins specifically, who made her entire vote for Kavanaugh contingent on the fact that he had said that in private meetings and in an open hearing.

She said in a statement quote, "if the leak draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our -- our meetings in my office. Obviously, we won't know each justice's decision and reasoning until the Supreme Court officially announces its opinion in this case." And again, you cannot overstate how shocked lawmakers are that this draft leaked up here on Capitol Hill, obviously very significant Victor.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Certainly is. Lauren, thanks so much. Let's explain -- expand the conversation now. CNN's Senior Political Correspondent Abby Phillip, CNN Senior Legal Analyst Laura Coates, she's a former Federal prosecutor, CNN Contributor Steve Vladeck, he is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

Welcome to you all. Abby, let me start here on Capitol Hill. President Biden says that, you know, codifying it, the protections into Federal law a good idea. Not prepared to support a filibuster, so what -- what are the plausible options for Democrats if they want to protect these rights should that decision come down as it's written in the draft?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, I think on Capitol Hill the options are fairly limited because while there are -- there is -- there is some bipartisan support in favor of abortion rights. I don't think that there is enough bipartisan support to -- to either pass a codification of Roe outright, which would take 60 votes, or to eliminate the filibuster in order to do that. Murkowski, Collins, unlikely to do that and certainly Senator Manchin has already said that he does not believe that this, along with many other issues, would justify eliminating the filibuster.

But I think you're going to see activists on the Democratic side looking to the administration to use executive action, and the president in his statement eluded to that as well. Are there things that can be done around contraception? Are there things that can be done to -- to -- to protect providers from, you know, criminal prosecution in -- in certain states? I think those are all things that they're going to be looking at, at the Federal level --

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PHILLIP: -- but that's not going to really resolve the overall issue that -- that will happen if Roe is overturned, which is that there are 26 states who are going to do their own thing and I'm not sure that the White House can do anything about that.

BLACKWELL: Laura, the president also said that this opinion would make every decision made in the notion of privacy, throws it into question. Is there a direct path from what you read in this -- this draft to the question of marriage, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage as well, contraception, the basic ideas of -- of privacy? Or are there some on the left who are hyperbolic in that language? Where do you see this?

LAURA COATES, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I don't think it's hyperbolic to think about this being a slippery slope, because remember Roe v. Wade was premised on the notion that there was a zone of privacy. That the government could not have its hands in every aspect of the American electorates existence. There are some areas that in order for us to believe in the consent of the governed, there are some things you must be hand often and you named several of them.

Fundamental rights, it includes interstate travel. It includes aspects of interracial. It includes same-sex not only marriage but also same- sex relationships and of course it also includes areas of contraception. Now this area also included, until we saw this draft opinion, abortion and so if you look at the idea of the zone of privacy being constrained, because Justice Alito says it should not have existed.

It was not decided appropriately in the instance and the actual inception of Roe v. Wade, and you have a lot of things that are now going to be on the proverbial chopping block even if the opinion says and if we were to believe they were actually to the final one then it's only to apply the area of abortion. There is no way for the Supreme Court to realistic contain that particular philosophy if the legislator believes that, hey, it's about a zone of privacy.

It's no longer extended to abortion, and what is to stop the other areas that we've just spoken about and this is why it's so concerning. You're talking about precedent and the value of precedent is to be relied upon and each of these justices we talked about from Amy Coney Barrett to Brett Kavanaugh to Neil Gorsuch to even Sam Alito himself, have spoken about the value of precedent and the value of it being reaffirmed. Because it lands to only the weight to the public, but the wealth of wisdom that we've come to rely on in this court.

BLACKWELL: Perfect segue Laura. Let's pick up now, 2006 during the Alito, SCOTUS nominee, his hearing there. This is an exchange with Dick Durbin on precedence (stare decisis) then I'll go to Steve. Let's play it.

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SENATOR DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Do you believe it is the subtle law of the land?

SAMUEL ALITO, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT: Roe versus Wade is a -- an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1973. So it's been on the books for a long time. It has been challenged on a number of occasions, and I think that when a decision is challenged and it is reaffirmed.

That strengthens its value as stare decisis for at least two reasons. First of all, the more often a decision is reaffirmed, the more people tend to rely on it and secondly, I think stare decisis reflects the view that there is wisdom embedded in decisions that have been made by prior justices.

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BLACKWELL: Steve, how do you reconcile that with what Justice Alito wrote in this draft opinion? We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.

STEVE VLADECK, CNN CONTRIBUTOR FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SCHOOL OF LAW: Yes. You know, Victor, I -- I don't think you do. I mean, I think, the best argument in defense of Justice Alito is that he's allowed to change his mind, but that predisposes that he actually changed his mind as opposed to, you know, answering the Senate Judiciary Committee the way -- in the way that they wanted to hear it.

And Victor, I think that cuts the larger point, I mean, you had on before Senator Collins' statement. I mean, do we really think these folks were fooled when you had these nominees going before them and saying Roe's the law of the land. My job is to follow the law of the land, or was that just cover to vote in support of someone without endorsing the steps they were going to take. I -- I (think) the real bottom line here Victor is to see just how quickly and how sharply the court has turned to the right over the last four years.

I mean it was four years ago that we still had a Supreme Court with Justice Anthony Kennedy as the median vote. It was, you know, six years ago that Kennedy was the swing vote in striking down some restrictions on abortion procedures in Texas.

And so I think, you know, what we're seeing here is exactly how political the court has become, where we've had these three successive confirmations of justices who all appear to be in this majority, and where, Victor, I mean just to put, you know, a fine point on it. The leak is presumably to lock them into that position. I mean, I think the best, you know, explanation for why this would come out now is because the majority, someone in the majority, someone who supports the majority wanted to --

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VLADECK: -- ensure that no one in the majority wavered and that no one was attracted, for example, by a -- maybe a concur opinion Justice Roberts had written. And I think no matter what you think of the implications Victor, the notion that this is an institution that's above politics ought to be one that we can, you know, relegate to the historical dust-pin.

BLACKWELL: Yes. There are some, of course, as we heard some Republican members of Congress who thinks it's the opposite where there are some liberal members of -- of the court or their clerks who leak this to apply some -- some pressure. There's an investigation, potentially we'll find out. Steve Vladeck, Abby Phillip, Laura Coates.

Thank you. Ukrainians escaping Mariupol are finally arriving in Zaporizhzhia. CNN is there to bring you their emotional accounts. You'll want to see that and President Biden is set to tour the plant that's producing Javelin anti-tank missiles which are being sent to Ukraine to fight off the Russian assault. We're live in Alabama next.

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BLACKWELL: Breaking news out of Ukraine, several large explosions were heard around Lviv. Big sections of the city now appear to be without electricity. Ukrainian railways say that a number of trains have also been halted because the attacks hit some railway power centers. We'll bring you more details as those come in.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian evacuees from the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol are arriving in Zaporizhzhia, 106 civilians made it to safety on a convoy of busses. Now consider before this, many of them had not seen daylight in weeks. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is in the shelter there in Zaporizhzhia. Nick what are they telling you about their experience there in that -- that -- that plant and the -- the journey to some safety.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. As you rightly point out Victor, early today when we were at the shelter where they are in Zaporizhzhia we heard of people telling us their experiences, frankly of being in the sunlight again. One woman aged 78, Olga (ph) blinking saying she found it hard to see in the intense sunlight she experienced once she got off the bus that had been part of a two-day journey she'd made.

In fact, Olga (ph) recognizable from being in a video filmed by the Ukrainian military of the initial evacuation out of Mariupol, out of indeed the rubble from the basement below the Azovstal Steel Factory and she kept saying to me, I am alone carrying with her two bags essentially her entire life in those. And even her toilet paper in her upper chest pockets here, a (head torch) around her neck.

That was the only source of light she had during those two months in which she was underground. On the other end of the spectrum, a young mother, Ana (ph), who's also recognizable from the Ukrainian -- same Ukrainian video in which she was carrying her six-month-old son's (inaudible) were (inaudible) she confirmed had spent a third of his life underground.

Those last two months they had together in the basement, punctuated by trying to feed him. She said he was an ideal child frankly. Slept the whole time, but when they couldn't get hot water for him. They used a candle to heat what they could. Even the Ukrainian soldiers though were fighting off that Russian onslaught were able to get him diapers to look after him.

But she confesses now, when she hears aircraft anywhere near her she reflectively curls up because she associates that with the intense detonations that were above their heads for those full two weeks. These are 100 people coming out of five busses were massively expected -- huge expectations, massive hopes so this begin a wider process. The UN and the Red Cross were behind getting these people out and Russian checkpoints do appear to have let them through.

The hope had been that might spark some sort of wider sturdier mechanism that would let thousands of people get out from Mariupol. There are possibly 100,000 civilians still in there. The complexity though, the fact that these 106 according to some more precise numbers manage, took two full days to get out of I think have some concerned we may not see large waves of evacuation imminently but still none of that dampens the relief those felt when they finally saw the sun again.

BLACKWELL: Unimaginable. All right, Nick Paton Walsh with reporting there. Thank you, Nick. President Biden is in Alabama right now. He's going to tour a Lockheed Martin factory that's producing thousands of anti-tank missile systems each year. Now the weapons provide critical defense for Ukraine against Russian attacks. CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins is in Troy, Alabama with the president. So what -- what are we expecting here from President Biden?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well Victor this is a pretty unusual trip for President Biden, and one that a lot of his advisors wouldn't expect for him to take about a year ago visiting a weapons making facility in the red state, of course, of Alabama. But here he is now, almost 70 days into this Russian invasion of Ukraine because this is the final assembly plant for those Javelins which have been so iconic during this invasion, which is what the Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says have been so effective in helping the Ukrainians push back against these Russian forces.

And so the president is coming here to visit with the very people who put the final touches on those javelins that are being sent to Ukraine, and of course this come amid the backdrop of President Biden calling for another $33 billion funding bill from Congress to continue arming Ukraine with things like javelins, other ammunition, other assistance that of course they so desperately need.

And so while he is here he will talk about that, but also it's a numbers game here because this is a plant that puts out about 2,100 javelins per year --

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COLLINS: -- of course the United States has already sent over 5,000 javelins to Ukraine. So there are big questions being raised not being able to ramp up production, send more javelins into Ukraine, which Ukrainian officials have said they need about 500 on a daily basis. And also Victor, replenishing U.S. stockpiles, but his visit does come after that major breaking news came out of Washington overnight when it comes to the Supreme Court.

Now that they have confirmed this draft opinion about overturning Roe versus Wade, of course the president was talking about this earlier. He said he wasn't prepared to make a judgment yet about whether or not they should try to use the filibuster on Capitol Hill, change the filibuster to try to codify -- to codify Roe versus Wade into law. So it doesn't matter what the Supreme Court decides, those are big questions that are still facing this White House of how they will try to navigate this until that final ruling does come out Victor.

BLACKWELL: Kaitlan Collins traveling with the president in Troy, Alabama. We, of course, will hear from the president next hour. Thank you Kaitlan. Republican governors across the country are on standby ready to enact their own abortion laws. We'll have more on that ahead.

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